Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment gifted son?

From the things you've described, I'd want further testing. I'm not familiar with the DAS, and I'm not sure about the VMI you mentioned but suspect VMI stands for Visual-Motor Integration (our ds has had the Beery VMI test as part of a neuropsych eval). It sounds like a private neurospych evaluation would be very helpful here - an eval that includes a full IQ + achievement test set plus follow-up tests for any areas that show discrepancies in scores. It's possible that everything you're seeing is simply due to giftedness, but many of us here with 2e children found that in the preschool and early elementary years (prior to testing and diagnosis) the only outlet our kids had to show us they were frustrated due to very real challenges that would later impact reading/writing/etc was through behaviors that we, as parents, didn't quite understand. Not sure what I'm saying makes sense! Just suggesting that there may be more going on than giftedness, and it's worth checking into to be sure it's not something more. And while you're looking into it, you'll get more info on the degree of giftedness too.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - I suggested private testing simply because many times you'll get more answers with private testing and you'll often have more ability to dig deeper with questions you may have post-testing. If you need to go through the school for cost purposes, that's ok - but I think I'd start with asking the specific questions you're asking here of the school staff that were involved in your ds' previous testing - they may have some insight to you based on his behaviors during testing etc, plus they should be able to explain the technical details of the specific test questions. Rather than look at it as "I'm pretty sure my ds is gifted and do these test scores show this or if not why not" I'd approach it from a "My ds is struggling in school, is there anything that we can learn from his prior testing".